I started drinking an hour ago, because although I could decide a take an evening to detox, there really wouldn't be much point. Today losing streakers of the world continued to lose, beginning with Wall Street, who had Barack Obama on hand to rub it in, and Britney Spears with lawyers and managers — oh, and Sean and Jayden — and as usual that sense you had last week that she really had, for finally, hit rock bottom. The Republicans, fresh from the loss of the loyalty of Alan Greenspan, and the illusion no one still harbored that the war in Iraq was about something other than oil, also lost Lincoln Chafee, who already himself had lost any political power with his Senate seat in November. O.J. Simpson, who long ago lost any reason to live other than to remind the public that people don't always deserve to live, lost the freedom he didn't deserve.

The mercenary company Blackwaterlost the Iraqi government contract that not long ago was supposed to symbolize the loss of something — some principle, some sense of duty and valour — that our military had lost long before Blackwater was so much as incorporated. John McCain lost his faith in the Episcopal church, which voters long ago lost any reason to actually care about, and the American banana titan Chiquita lost a little bit more of that global stature it began relinquishing so many decades ago. On a hopeful note, Hillary Clinton says she's going to do something about health care Forgive me if I self-medicate until I see it.